As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,020,591, in certain oil field equipment it is necessary, from time to time, to couple lengths of tubular housings to one another from a location on the floor of the drilling rig. The housings are typically pin and socket members which are threadedly interconnected to one another and sealed with O-ring pressure seals. The housings, in a longitudinally aligned relationship, form an elongated housing or tool which is transported into a well bore which traverses earth formations. Typically, the well bore which transverses earth formations is filled with drilling or other type of control liquid and the hydrostatic pressures and temperature down hole are significantly greater than ambient temperature and pressure. As a consequence it is both necessary and desirable to use O-ring or packing sealing elements in the various interconnections between adjacent housings to prevent the intrusion of fluids under well bore pressure to the interior of the well tool housings.
Because operational time in a drilling process is very expensive, the time required to threadedly couple or make up the connection of tubular housing members to one another for a well bore operation can be an significant cost factor. In addition, the types of coupling threads employed to interconnect adjacent housings are expensive to cut or machine and care must be taken in assembly to avoid improper threading or galling of the threads during makeup. This is particularly true with oil well perforating devices and logging tools where the length of the tools can require a substantial number of housings to be threadedly interconnected.